Day 114, Tuesday, 21 July 2009

Threeways Roadhouse

Today was a rest day. We updated the website for the last 10 days and did the washing.

In the evening we had dinner with Ginny, Sue and Barry from Anyinginyi Health. We met Sue at Barkly Roadhouse as their team was driving out to some of the remote communities to run some clinics. Sue and Ginny are nurses and Barry a doctor and it was very interesting to hear their stories and why they have chosen to practice in “The Barkly”. They try to spend most of their time in the communities, only coming back into Tennant Creek for meetings and to catch up on the paper work we all try to escape from. All three love their jobs and the people they provide services to and hope to stay for the long term.

Over the years the communities have seen many health practitioners come and go so the three have put a lot of effort into forming friends and trust within the communities within which they live and service. Barry explained how one day he knew he was making progress – “We went into [the community]. ……. We drove up in our truck and its school holidays and all the children had come back into the community. We had just got out of the truck and we heard this shout from inside the houses – “Who is it?” – and one of the young children says “It’s a veeerrrry ooooold man” and the voice from inside the house said “Oh, that will be the doctor!” Barry bursts out laughing “………that will be the doctor!”

In the last couple of days we had commented that we had not seen any birds of prey along the Barkly Highway. Locals tell us that this is due to the rains earlier this year, which has greened up the country. This means that the kangaroos and wallabies do not come to the roadside looking for green feed and do not end up as roadkill, which attracts the birds to the roadside. We were assured that there are still many Wedged Tailed Eagles and Kites in the area but they are doing what these birds normally do rather than scavenging dead carcases from the edge of the road.

Zoom into the map and use the 'Satellite' layer to see our new location.

 

 

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